Fashion as art: Rights and remedies in the age of social media

Today’s increasingly widespread recognition of fashion’s artistic value has revamped the debate on the appropriateness of rights and remedies provided by IP law to fashion designs. From an Italian–US comparative perspective, this article inquires whether copyright protection, traditionally accorded to artists, is eligible and applied for fashion, detecting that rights and remedies are better accessible to major fashion companies and for iconic items, while they are not easily attainable by smaller designers. Analyzing a number of case studies, this article describes a growing phenomenon in the age of the digital revolution, that is, controversies regarding the fashion world tend to be disputed on social media rather than in courtrooms. Beyond the debate on which existing formal legal tools are suitable for fashion, the purpose is to bring the phenomenon of informal self-regulation out of court into conversation, examining advantages and disadvantages. Social media platforms are more suitable to fashion’s nature and dynamics, and ultimately, their verdicts seem to obtain better results than litigation, balancing the unequal positions of established and emerging brands.